Last night I finally finished moot court. This was the second moot court I'd done, and this time it was optional. By my own choice I had to write a brief and then argue it before a pretend panel of appellate judges. My topic was on antitrust law, a very confusing subject I'm starting to know a lot about, what with this brief and my Antitrust and IP seminar. That said, it was a very difficult legal question I had to write and argue about. It involved tying, which is when a company conditions the purchase of one product on the purchase of another. This kind of arrangement can have anticompetitive effects as the company can use its dominant market power in one area to exert dominance in another. The law generally frowns on anticompetitive behavior, and on tying, but not necessarily. Tying isn't always illegal, and sometimes anticompetitive behavior isn't either. Sometimes it's even encouraged. So it's a far more complicated matter to figure out if a company doing tying would have liability for an antitrust violation. I had to argue in this case that the vendor in question was not.
Originally I felt like I'd done a poor job on the brief, because despite being able to write up to 12 pages, I only wrote 5. But the original question we were supposed to answer was unclear and contained confusing details. As best I was able to understand what was going on, 5 pages may have been perfectly adequate to lay out my argument. And after I handed it in I also discovered many other student with the same argument had only written 5-7 pages themselves, so perhaps I don't pale in contrast. Many other may have dropped out of the competition entirely as well, because that's what this was, a competition, and the best competitors this semester get to do the honors moot court in the spring.
With the briefs turned in last month, last night we finally had the chance to argue the case. I didn't do spectacularly because there wasn't sufficient enough time to do the preparation needed to be spectacular, but I think I did solidly. I'm resigned to not continuing on to the honors moot court next semester, but I hope to do some more moot court competitions in some form. I aim to keep doing it until I get it right.
Backdated to 11/4. Actually posted 11/6. Edited a bit on 11/17.